180

uth:

155

Swear by the duty that you owe to God-
Our part therein we banish with yourselves—
To keep the oath that we administer;
You never shall, so help you truth and God!
Embrace each other's love in banishment;
Nor never look upon each other's face;
Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile

185

This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;
Nor never by advised purpose meet
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Boling. I swear.

190

Mow. And I, to keep all this.

Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy:

By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wander'd in the air,
Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banish'd from this land:
Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burthen of a guilty soul.
Mow. No, Bolingbroke: if ever I were traitor,

195

200

205

My name be blotted from the book of life,
And I from heaven banish'd as from hence!
But what thou art, God, thou, and I do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.
Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way.
K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes
I see thy grieved heart: thy sad aspect
Hath from the number of his banish'd years
Pluck'd four away. [To Boling.] Six frozen winters spent,
Return with welcome home from banishment.

185, 186, 188. never] Qq 1, 2, 3, 4; ever Ff, Q 5.

[Exit.

210

193. far] Ff 2, 3, 4, Q 5 ; fare Qq 1, 2, 3, 4, F 1. 198. the] Qq 1, 2, 3, 4; this Ff, Q 5. 206-7. stray; England,] Capell's stopping (Roderick conj.); stray, . . . England Qq 1, 2; stray, England, Qq 3, 4, 5, Ff.

181. Our yourselves] We absolve you from your duty to us because we banish you.

185, 186, 188. Nor never] The Folios and Q5 shied at the double negative. The alteration is needless, double negatives of this type being quite common in Elizabethan English.

193. Norfolk enemy] In this phrase Bolingbroke wishes to indicate that while still holding Norfolk as his enemy he wishes to say certain things to him. earlier The fare of the editions is an evident misprint for farre.

Boling. How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.
Gaunt. I thank my liege, that in regard of me
He shortens four years of my son's exile:
But little vantage shall I reap thereby;
For, ere the six years that he hath to spend
Can change their moons and bring their times
My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct with age and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,

And blindfold death not let me see my son. K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou canst giv

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow And pluck nights from me, but not lend a mo Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage; Thy word is current with him for my death, But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath K. Rich. Thy son is banish'd upon good advice, Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave: Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lour? Gaunt. Things sweet to taste prove in digestion so You urged me as a judge; but I had rather You would have bid me argue like a father. O, had it been a stranger, not my child, To smooth his fault I should have been more

227. sullen] Qq 1, 2, 3, 4; sudden Ff, Q 5.

222. extinct] In the literal sense of "extinguished"; Shakespeare never used this latter word. Note, for what it may be worth, Gaunt's echoing in line 222 of Norfolk's endless night, line 177.

224. blindfold death] Roughly equivalent to " my being dead and therefore blindfold."

227. sullen] There is hardly any doubt that "sullen" is preferable to "sudden here. Shakespeare seems to have been very fond of the word in Richard II., using it four times during the play; only in two other plays does he use it even twice.

...

231. Thy death] Time would accept the king's word for Gaunt's

A partial slander sought I to avoid,
And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas, I look'd when some of you should say,
I was too strict to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will to do myself this wrong.
K. Rich. Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so:
Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

245

[Flourish. Exeunt King Richard and train.
Aum. Cousin, farewell: what presence must not know,
From where you do remain let paper show.
Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride,
As far as land will let me, by your side.

Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,
That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?
Boling. I have too few to take my leave of you,

When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.
Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone.
Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.
Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure.
Boling. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,
Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps

Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home return.

241. partial slander] accusation of
partiality.

239-242. Omitted from the Folios and Q 5.

249-251. Cousin . no leave take I] Although Aumerle is not directed to leave the stage by any editors he evidently takes his leave of Bolingbroke; Aumerle's own speech and the words of the Marshal, no leave take I, seem to leave no doubt on the point. He says nothing further during the remainder of the scene, and might therefore quite well go off after the words let paper show. On the other hand, it may be objected that because Bolingbroke would say no word of farewell to any one but Gaunt, Aumerle's exit would be somewhat awkward and difficult, besides, when we come to the opening speeches of scene iv. we find that

250

255

260

Bala the ct

of kit

265

Aumerle has accompanied Bolingbroke
to the next highway.

257. dolour] grief. Compare Lucrece,
1582:-

"It easeth some, though none it
ever cured

To think their dolour others have
endured."

258-263. An example of orixoμvola
(line for line dialogue), characteristic
of early Shakespeare and due chiefly to
the influence of Seneca, who, in turn,
had found it in his originals.

262. travel] journey. We no longer use the noun in the singular in this sense, but in the plural we still speak of a man's travels.

266. foil] Properly a thin leaf (Fr. feuille] of metal (compare gold-foil, silver-foil, tin-foil) set behind or beneath a precious stone in order to enhance its

Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make
Will but remember me what a deal of world
I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages, and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else
But that I was a journeyman to grief?
Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;

There is no virtue like necessity.
Think not the king did banish thee,

But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour
And not the king exiled thee; or suppose
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air
And thou art flying to a fresher clime:
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou come
Suppose the singing birds musicians,

The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence stre

269. a] Omitted from Qq 3, 4. colour or sparkle. Here Shakespeare uses the word more in the wider sense of" setting."

269. remember] remind. 272. foreign passages] wanderings in foreign lands.

271-4. At the end of his apprenticeship the worker becomes a journeyman (lit. a man who hires himself out by the day); was therefore cannot possibly refer to the past time of the apprenticeship but to the time when the apprenticeship is finished. Shakespeare could never have confounded the apprentice with the journeyman, although the tenses used appear to imply such a confusion. The meaning therefore is that "even when I shall have closed my apprenticeship to foreign travel I shall only have turned myself into grief's journeyman." 275. the eye of heaven] the sun. Exactly the same phrase meets us in III. ii. 37, infra.

276. wise man] Printed as one word in Qq 1, 2, clearly indicating accentuation. Compare the modern " good

268-293. Omitted from Ff, Q

man," and 2 Henry IV. v "Goodman death, goodman Compare also note on rud King John, 1. i. 64, in this se

278. Proverbial long befo speare's time. See Chaucer Tale, 3044: "To maken necessite." "Laudem virtu sitati damus ": Quintilian, 1. viii. 14. Hadrianus Julius ditions to Erasmus's Adag "Necessitatem in virtutem tare" as a proverb current countrymen.

289. the presence strew'd] sence-chamber of the king with rushes. It is somewha whether the floors of the roy were still strewn with rushes ard's time. Eleanor, queen I., had some carpets given her half-brother Sanchez, A of Toledo; but their use in teenth century was evidently effeminate, for Matthew Pa slightingly of Eleanor's intro hangings like those in chu